Longtime Frisco resident Walter Goff dies

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Anyone who has ever walked across the 3rd Street Bridge in Frisco probably wondered who lived in the little cabin next to Tenmile Creek. It was the cabin with the yard full of old bikes and lawnmowers and lots of other stuff. The occupant was Walter Goff, who called the cabin home for over a half century. Walt passed away Tuesday, July 10, just a week shy of his 92nd birthday.Walt was a collector, a bit of a recluse and hermit, but a wonderful old gentleman, said Chris Eby, a neighbor who met Walt 15 years ago. "He gave my daughter one of her first bikes, which she decorated and rode in the Frisco July 4th parade several years ago." Walt was born July 17, 1920, the youngest of 12 kids, in rural Virginia. Walt migrated to Colorado in the 1950s, where he was a construction worker. He moved to the mountains shortly after, and worked on the Roberts Tunnel and Eisenhower Tunnel. He liked to go to auctions where he would bid on the bikes, lawnmowers, snowblowers and lots of other items which would invariably find a home in his yard and provided him with endless opportunities to tinker. He was still driving to the post office and market just a few months ago, before falling ill.Neighbors Dr. Jonathan and Clare Ann Whitfield "inherited" Walt when they acquired the cabin in the early 1990s and allowed Walt to remain there, rent free, until his final days. "Walt became an extended member of the family and we will miss him," Clare Ann lamented.Walt never married, but had many nieces and nephews, grand nieces and nephews, and more, mostly located the southeast area of the United States.Burial will take place at the Dillon Cemetery at noon Friday, July 13.